His trainers claim to have taught Koshik six Korean words. But how accurate is he? Researchers recorded the elephant at his home, the Everland Zoo in South Korea, and then played the recordings for 16 native Korean speakers.

When the subjects transcribed Koshik's noises, they generally recognized five of the six words, including “annyong.” It turns out that Koshik can produce correct-sounding vowels 67 percent of the time, but his consonant pronunciation was only recognizable 21 percent of the time. The work is in the journal Current Biology. [Angela S. Stoeger et al., An Asian Elephant Imitates Human Speech]

To achieve his remarkable feat, Koshik sticks his trunk in his mouth, which changes the shape of his vocal tract so he can reproduce human sounds and pitch. However he learned this technique, it’s a good bet the elephant won’t forget it.